The Ballad of the Breaks and RiverSons Song Notes
This pair of songs, co-written over 30 years apart about two Rivers are inseparable. 500 miles away and in incredibly different environs and cultural settings both Rivers carried everything that mattered for 100s of years. Settlers, logs, fish, drinking water while purifying the vast countryside all around. Rivers seem to emulate the blood that runs deep and forged America’s history. The Cumberland Mountains, separating Kentucky and Virginia, break up at the Breaks Park, 5 miles from my boyhood home. The river that runs through the Canyon is the world renown Russell Fork, class 6 plus Rapids, that until 20 years ago had rarely been navigated. The story my brother Hugh tells is one of the many efforts made by a New York TV crew that ended in disaster.
The Schuylkill River is in Philadelphia. Its upper end rises in what are called the richest anthracite coal fields in the world and winds its way through the middle of the city where the character quickly changes. David Sullivan grew up, lived and worked on its banks all his life and tells his tale with conviction. Of course, Inner-city Philly or Rugged Southwest Virginia, at opposite ends of the Appalachian Mountains both were beautiful and pristine just after the great flood…a time we can remember and celebrate each time it snows…
The Ballad of the Breaks (Close to the Heart Songs, 2016, Kerry Belcher, all rights reserved) written and performed with Hugh C. Belcher
Hey city boy, say you want to come to the mountains? You done got it figured out, gonna’ do a little Dan’l Boone You’re gonna’ raft that creek and climb these cliffs down where they call the Breaks yeah, you got your fancy gear but that ain’t all it takes
Well you might ort to heed the words I say and pack on up your bags and take the nearest Greyhound Bus back home Cause this here river has done decided that she aint going to be beat, by the likes of some smart Yankee boy and we won’t hear you moan
Chorus Cause the river crashes loud-‘gainst them boulders tall and proud and manys the one that tried before and always failed So if their path you’re going to trod, better get it right with God cause the Russell Fork she empties into Hell v2 Well many’s the man who tried before what makes you better than them? Me and my old Pappy were just two. We rafted down to the indian site and then our raft, she sank I got bit by a big, black rattlesnake when I swam up to the bank Well city boy, you should have listened to my warning I was just trying to save your lousy skin Well the searching party has done give up and headed back for home, I guess the only thing left to do is notify your next of kin chorus
RiverSons (Close to the Heart Songs, 2016, Kerry Belcher, all rights reserved)
written and performed with Dave Sullivan, playing the B3 organ and accordion
Kerry: I am a son of these mountains I’ve spent all my life in these hills
And when we drove through the gaps in route 80 I never failed to get chills
The first was the home I was born in…the second, Uncle Henry made his home
But the third and final gap in those hills made me cry…every time
Chorus 1:
The Cumberlands Breaks into pieces While 1000 feet down below
The Russell Fork tumbles and eddies and puts on an unending show
It carries the black powdered dust from the coal that paid for most all that I own but the sights and the sounds and the people back home are so comforting
Dave: I am a son of this small town, by the city of Brotherly Love
It used to be farms but they all disappeared-in the sprawl of Suburbia
Most of our Dads caught the train into town while everyone’s Mother’s stayed home
We ran through the land of the free and the brave-all summer long
Chorus 2:
The footprints of Valley Forge still haunt this land, where the Schuylkill runs clear and clean while downstream the factories turn her to blood and make Philadelphia seem…
Like a tired old woman and run down and worn by the weight of her long history
But that bell that she rang so long ago is still promising
Bridge
But in the cold and still of the winter a blanket of white covers all
The sins of the landscape are all wiped away as the big flakes of snow start to fall
So it’s cold and it’s hard to deal with each year but it’s worth all the effort to me
Cause just for a day or two every thing’s back like a used to be Oh used to be…
Chorus 3
When the Cumberlands broke into pieces and the first time the Schuylkill was freed
And Everest was covered by water that made its way to the sea
And the rainbow spread from the east to the west and every stream made it’s way down
And the oceans roared and the waterfalls poured off the mountain-and everything-for a moment-was just like it used to be
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